Coldfusion 9 Standard w/Multiple Websites and Rackspace

[Samantha_Dash]

Can I host multiple websites (i.e., with unique IP addresses) on 1 install of CF9 Standard?

I plan to purchase CF9 standard and install it on a Rackspace Cloud Server.

I have about 5 websites I want to port over from a shared hosting environment.

Thanks In Advance,

BlueSpoon

[Adam Cameron.]

Can I host multiple websites (i.e., with unique IP addresses) on 1 install of CF9 Standard?

Yep.

--

Adam

[Samantha_Dash]

Adam,

I don't mean to be a jerk, but can you clarify a bit more? How would I set this up? Can anyone point me to some blogs or online resources? I did a search and only Fuzzy Orange mentions something about CF9 deployment with RackSpace.

I called adobe last week and was told to leave a voice mail with someone. Of course I never heard back.

I am planning to spend close to  2 grand for CF9 standard, you would think that the sales team would bend over backwards to address sales related questions.

Anyways, can someone suggest an alternative board to post Coldfusion related questions? Is HouseOfFusion still active?

I guess everyone here will call me some ugly names now. Go ahead, like I really care. I will continue coding...

[carl type3]

Hi BlueSpoon,

If Windows with IIS. Have all your websites configured. Then when installing CF standard - sellect ALL IIS sites.

Hope this helps, Carl.

[Adam Cameron.]

I don't know that searching for "rackspace" as part of your search is really relevant.  Rackspace are just a hosting provider, just like any other one.  What you need to be searching for is "installing coldfusion", although I suspect the docs probably cover this?

Have you read through the relevant section of the docs:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Installing/index.html

That said, the bods at Rackspace can probably do this for you, can't they?  To be honest, if you don't already know how to do a CF installation, beginning by setting up your production servers is probably not a very good idea.  Get someone who knows what they're doing to get those boxes strummed up.

I guess everyone here will call me some ugly names now. Go ahead, like I really care. I will continue coding...

Why would you say something like that?  Your post seemed completely reasonably until that point.

--

Adam

[josh_adams1]

bluespoon, I hate to even mention this because it stands to only fuel your ire but the sales management at Adobe has tasked the ColdFusion sales team with focusing on larger deals that what you're indicating you'll be buying. However, I'm sorry that no one returned the voice mail you left. And I certainly want to help you if I can!

As it seems you may be tacitly acknowledging you are aware, ColdFusion 9 licensing does permit running on cloud instances; for ColdFusion 9 Standard, you're allowed to run on 1 cloud instance.  So you're good to go there.

So you just need to install ColdFusion 9 on a Rackspace cloud instance.  The specifics of how that's done may be unique to Rackspace but as Adam (and the Fuzzy Orange blog post you referenced) points out, when you get down to it, it's a ColdFusion 9 install like any other.  So if you're hung up on the Rackspace side of things, Adam is right:  you need their support people to help you.  If you're hung up on the ColdFusion side of things, you should start with the Installing ColdFusion 9 documentation at http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Installing/index.html and then reply here if you need more help.

[Samantha_Dash]

Josh, Carl, and Adam,

Thanks for trying to answer my question.

My question boils down to this: Can I host multiple websites (i.e., each with their own unique IP addresses) on 1 install of CF9 Standard on a single Cloud Site?

According to Carl, this can be configured in IIS so I believe the technical issue is resolved.  So my next issue is if this would be ok with Adobe? Would I be breaking their licensing terms by having 5 (or even 20) sites using 1 install of CF9 Standard on a single cloud site?

My question arrose b/c reading this: http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/pdfs/cf9_feature_comparison_matrix_ue.pdf . I interpreted this as multiple sites can only be done wiith CF 9 Enterprise edition.

Thanks in advance for the advice.

Bluespoon

-----------

Slighty Off Topic But Relevant:

@Josh.. Not sure if you're an Adobe employee, but my questions are valid and legitimate pre-sales questions. I'm just an individual not a large corporation. So before I plunk down $2,000 for CF9,  I need to know if I can legally (and technically) host multiple websites on 1 CF9 Standard license. I'm sure Adobe can afford to hire at least 2 guys to answer questions from budding entrepreneurs and small busineses. At the very least it's good customer service. Even Cisco has a dedicated support team for small business. It's ridiculous that I can't even speak (or even email) someone at Adobe to get at least "yes" or "no" answer.

Individual developers are the lifeblood of coldfusion. If it weren't for guys like Charlie Arehart, Dan Vega, Ray Camden, Ben Nadel, etc I assure you that the CF developer community would be much smaller. Last I checked, Univeristy of Wisconsin has not posted any CF tutorials or trips and tricks.

I've been a Coldfusion fan since 2005. And I've been familiar with it since 1998 while doing contract work with the Fed. So it's like a smack in the face that I am ignored once I'm ready to take the financial risk and pay $2,000 for my own copy of their server software. Developers have other options. Ignoring the devloper base is not the way to go. And that plain sucks. Adobe has really disppointed me. They've let me down.

[ilssac · Accepted solution]

I don't know what troubles you have had.

But YES you can connect as many IIS and|or Apache websites to a single ColdFusion 9 Standard install as you think your CPU and Memory can handle.

Yes there is often confusion on this issue, but if you where to actually try the software you quickly see that the web server configuration clearly states it can connect "all" or multiple individual web sites to a coldfusion instance.

[Samantha_Dash]

Thank you Isaac

Bluespoon

[Guest]

I know this post is a few days old, but out of curiousity, why do you want a dedicated hosting provider anyway? I mean not that there is anything wrong with rackspace, its just really high and unnecessary when there are other options that offer what you need. Crystaltech is a really good hosting company that already has CF 9 server installed. I believe they also offer unlimited unique IP's so you can have as many sites as you want. Just a thought.

[Reed_Powell-ttnmOb]

I've used CrystalTech/NewTek for a long time, have always been pretty happy with them, except on this one topic of multiple websites/domains.  They do a poor job at it, and seem to be pretty proud of that.  Their help files specifically tell you that if you want to do this then what you need to do is to have a CF script at the root that looks at the incoming URL and then redirects to the proper sub-folder for the intended website.  What a crock.  I use other, significantly less expensive, hosting companies that make it trivial to have a ton of sites in one hosting account, and have never understood why CrystalTech has kept their position on this.

-reed

[Guest]

function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}

Reed Powell wrote:

I've used CrystalTech/NewTek for a long time, have always been pretty happy with them, except on this one topic of multiple websites/domains.  They do a poor job at it, and seem to be pretty proud of that.  Their help files specifically tell you that if you want to do this then what you need to do is to have a CF script at the root that looks at the incoming URL and then redirects to the proper sub-folder for the intended website.  What a crock.  I use other, significantly less expensive, hosting companies that make it trivial to have a ton of sites in one hosting account, and have never understood why CrystalTech has kept their position on this.

-reed

Wow I didn't know they did this Reed. I will have to look into this, as I am going to potentually be migrating at the least 3 sites to their servers in the near future. Thanks for the heads up!

Since you mentioned other less expensive sites that allow multiple domains and I assume support CF, could you name a few? I am with daily razor now, but am not very happy! CF hosting sites, good ones anyway, are few and far between, so I always welcome someone else's favorites.

[Reed_Powell-ttnmOb]

I use IXwebhosting for a bunch of small sites I work with, all under one account.  Multiple domain names and subdomains, including dedicated IPs, are a breeze.  I have been generally pleased with them, although their support is nowhere near that of CrystalTech or BlueHost (but BlueHost doesn't do CF). I think they now offer CF9 but cannot swear to that, my sites are still running on CF8 at IX.  Only costs me around $125/year, includes both MS SQL & mySQL, as well as php, and dot-Net. They have their own, home-drown, control panel - you get used to it after a while, but it is nothing like cPanel.  but then Crystal tech has their own screwy control panel as well that feels like it was built by a 9th grader using Notepad, so I guess it's not fair to ding IX on that side of things. There are definitely worse CF hosting services.

Too bad BlueHost doesn't do CF, because they do a kick-a** job at hosting and supporting php/mySQL and CMS software (Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal).

-reed

[Guest]

Reed Powell wrote:

I use IXwebhosting for a bunch of small sites I work with, all under one account.  Multiple domain names and subdomains, including dedicated IPs, are a breeze.  I have been generally pleased with them, although their support is nowhere near that of CrystalTech or BlueHost (but BlueHost doesn't do CF). I think they now offer CF9 but cannot swear to that, my sites are still running on CF8 at IX.  Only costs me around $125/year, includes both MS SQL & mySQL, as well as php, and dot-Net. They have their own, home-drown, control panel - you get used to it after a while, but it is nothing like cPanel.  but then Crystal tech has their own screwy control panel as well that feels like it was built by a 9th grader using Notepad, so I guess it's not fair to ding IX on that side of things. There are definitely worse CF hosting services.

Too bad BlueHost doesn't do CF, because they do a kick-a** job at hosting and supporting php/mySQL and CMS software (Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal).

-reed

I had looked into IXhosting and what seems to be a sister company, or at least the same web designer designed both sites because they look indentical, hostingexcellence.com. In my experience though, usually you get what you pay for, and I thought the low price for hosting in a CF site was too good to be true. As has been my very experience with dailyrazor! lol Their tech support consists of me emailing them with a support ticket and waiting for an hour up to a few days!

But, as you said, crystaltech's customer support is top notch!.

[ilssac]

bluespoon wrote:

I'm sure Adobe can afford to hire at least 2 guys to answer questions from budding entrepreneurs and small busineses.

At least at one time they did.   This post is getting older and older and harder to find.  I also have no idea if it is still valid or not.

http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2007/10/9/ColdFusions-Dedicated-Account-Managers

Just a reminder (especially for those of you whose experiences when calling Adobe sales regarding ColdFusion were anything less than stellar) ...

Adobe has dedicated ColdFusion Account Managers (in the U.S. and Canada), all they do is ColdFusion, and they can help with purchasing, EULA and pricing questions, and more. Here are the contact details:

• For users in AK, AR, AZ, CA, CO, HI, IA, ID, IL, KS, LA, MN, MO, MT, ND, NE, NM, NV, OK, OR, SD, TX, UT, WA, WI, WY (West of the Mississippi), ping Jason Graves at jgraves@adobe.com or call (858) 847-7541.
• For users in AL, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IN, KY, MD, MA, ME, MI, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, VT, WV (East of the Mississippi) as well as Eastern Canada & Ontario, ping Dominick Conte at  dconte@adobe.com or call (858) 847-7451.

[revised]

[adrock]

@bluespoon:

Yes: You can run multiple web sites on a single license of ColdFusion 9 Standard (configured via the web server -- IIS or Apache).

Yes: The ColdFusion 9 license allows for multiple web sites. ColdFusion is _not_ licensed per site, it's licensed per-CPU or per server (virtual or cloud). In this case, one license of ColdFusion 9 Standard will cover your Rachspace cloud instance.

In regards to the dedicated ColdFusion sales team at Adobe, Josh is correct in that the internal team at Adobe is focused on Enterprise customers. However, they should not be ignoring anyone. We have a large network of partners and resellers that provided sales support for ColdFusion. I don't know who you left a voicemail with, so I can't really track down the culprit, but my apologies.

The link on Ben Forta's blog is a bit outdated. The authoratative place to look is here on Adobe.com (under Other Ways To Purchase):

http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/buy/

As far as where to go for help, I think you've found one of the best places. Lots of members from the ColdFusion team monitor these forums. Josh Adams is the ColdFusion SE (Technical Sales), I'm the Product Manager and you'll find many members of our support and security teams answering questions here.

-Adam Lehman

ColdFusion Product Manager

[Adam Cameron.]

As far as where to go for help, I think you've found one of the best places. Lots of members from the ColdFusion team monitor these forums. Josh Adams is the ColdFusion SE (Technical Sales), I'm the Product Manager and you'll find many members of our support and security teams answering questions here.

And it's the best place to go for help for none of those reasons, because it is very rare that anyone from Adobe pops their head over the parapet.  It is really very very rare for anyone from Adobe to post anything here, whether they "monitor it" or not.  However it is the best place to go for help because of the community members who put far more time into helping people here than anyone from Adobe ever has.  Let's not forget about those people, eh Adam?

--

Adam (the other one)

[adrock]

Adam (the other one),

Sorry. I was too busy letting bugs fester in our bugbase to mention all the great contributions made by the community members like yourself. 😉

The community is the first line of support -- most definitely. However, we obviously can't answer every and all question in the various forums and lists we monitor (although we try). Also, my email address is adrock at adobe dotcom. My virtual door is always open.

-Adam

ColdFusion Product Manager

[Adam Cameron.]

Sorry. I was too busy letting bugs fester in our bugbase

Well you're doing an excellent job there, anyhow.

😉

(Hey you said it.  And, yes, I know you're quoting me from the OBD forum... you gotta admit they fix bugs much faster than you guys do.  That was the point I was making over there.  My expectations of CF cf OBD are different though, given they're open source and small and kinda need to go above-and-beyond to make any headway in the marketplace.  But anyway).

--

Adam